Sacred Economics

Sacred Economics
Author: Charles Eisenstein
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2011-07-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1583943986

Sacred Economics traces the history of money from ancient gift economies to modern capitalism, revealing how the money system has contributed to alienation, competition, and scarcity, destroyed community, and necessitated endless growth. Today, these trends have reached their extreme—but in the wake of their collapse, we may find great opportunity to transition to a more connected, ecological, and sustainable way of being. This book is about how the money system will have to change—and is already changing—to embody this transition. A broadly integrated synthesis of theory, policy, and practice, Sacred Economics explores avant-garde concepts of the New Economics, including negative-interest currencies, local currencies, resource-based economics, gift economies, and the restoration of the commons. Author Charles Eisenstein also considers the personal dimensions of this transition, speaking to those concerned with "right livelihood" and how to live according to their ideals in a world seemingly ruled by money. Tapping into a rich lineage of conventional and unconventional economic thought, Sacred Economics presents a vision that is original yet commonsense, radical yet gentle, and increasingly relevant as the crises of our civilization deepen. Sacred Economics official website: http://sacred-economics.com/

The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible

The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
Author: Charles Eisenstein
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2013-11-05
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 1583947248

As seen on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday A beacon of hope in the face of our current world crises, this uplifting book demonstrates how embracing our interconnectedness is key to world transformation In a time of social and ecological crisis, what can we as individuals do to make the world a better place? This inspirational and thought-provoking book serves as an empowering antidote to the cynicism, frustration, paralysis, and overwhelm so many of us are feeling, replacing it with a grounding reminder of what’s true: we are all connected, and our small, personal choices bear unsuspected transformational power. By fully embracing and practicing this principle of interconnectedness—called interbeing—we become more effective agents of change and have a stronger positive influence on the world. Throughout the book, Eisenstein relates real-life stories showing how small, individual acts of courage, kindness, and self-trust can change our culture’s guiding narrative of separation, which, he shows, has generated the present planetary crisis. He brings to conscious awareness a deep wisdom we all innately know: until we get ourselves in order, any action we take—no matter how good our intentions—will ultimately be wrong-headed and wrong-hearted. Above all, Eisenstein invites us to embrace a radically different understanding of cause and effect, sounding a clarion call to surrender our old worldview of separation, so that we can finally create the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. With chapters covering separation, interbeing, despair, hope, pain, pleasure, consciousness, and many more, the book invites us to let the old Story of Separation fall away so that we can stand firmly in a Story of Interbeing.

The Film Sense

The Film Sense
Author: Sergei Eisenstein
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 316
Release: 1947
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780156309356

A renowned Soviet director discusses his theory of film as an artistic medium which must appeal to all senses and applies it to an analysis of sequences from his major movies.

The Ascent of Humanity

The Ascent of Humanity
Author: Charles Eisenstein
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Total Pages: 577
Release: 2013-02-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1583946365

The author of The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self Our disconnection from one another and the natural world has mislaid the foundations of science, religion, money, technology, economics, medicine, and education as we know them. It has fired our near-pathological pursuit of technological Utopias even as we push ourselves and our planet to the brink of collapse. Fortunately, an Age of Reunion is emerging out of the birth pangs of an earth in crisis. Our journey of separation hasn't been a terrible mistake but an evolutionary process and an adventure in self-discovery. Even in our darkest hour, Eisenstein sees the possibility of a more beautiful world—not through the extension of millennia-old methods of management and control but by fundamentally reimagining ourselves and our systems. We must shift away from our Babelian efforts to build ever-higher towers to heaven and instead turn out attention to creating a new kind of civilization—one designed for beauty rather than height.

Climate

Climate
Author: Charles Eisenstein
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2018-09-18
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1623172489

A stirring case for a wholesale reimagining of the framing, tactics, and goals we employ in our journey to heal from ecological destruction With research and insight, Charles Eisenstein details how the quantification of the natural world leads to a lack of integration and our “fight” mentality. With an entire chapter unpacking the climate change denier’s point of view, he advocates for expanding our exclusive focus on carbon emissions to see the broader picture beyond our short-sighted and incomplete approach. The rivers, forests, and creatures of the natural and material world are sacred and valuable in their own right—not simply for carbon credits or preventing the extinction of one species versus another. After all, when you ask someone why they first became an environmentalist, they’re likely to point to the river they played in, the ocean they visited, the wild animals they observed, or the trees they climbed when they were a kid. This refocusing away from impending catastrophe and our inevitable doom cultivates meaningful emotional and psychological connections and provides real, actionable steps to caring for the earth. Freeing ourselves from a war mentality and seeing the bigger picture of how everything from prison reform to saving the whales can contribute to our planetary ecological health, we resist reflexive postures of solution and blame and reach toward the deep place where commitment lives.

Sergei Eisenstein

Sergei Eisenstein
Author: Ronald Bergan
Publisher: Skyhorse
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2016-01-05
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1628726261

Now back in print, this acclaimed biography reassesses a titan of early cinema based on new material released after the fall of the Soviet Union. Sergei Eisenstein: A Life in Conflict tells the dramatic story of one of world cinema’s towering geniuses and principal theorists. Ronald Bergan details Eisenstein’s life from his precocious childhood to his explosion onto the avant-garde scene in revolutionary Russia, through his groundbreaking film career, his relationships with authors and artists such as James Joyce and Walt Disney, and his untimely death at age fifty. Eisenstein’s landmark films, including The Battleship Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible, are still watched, admired, and taught throughout the world. Drawing upon material recently released from the Soviet archives after the breakup of the USSR and from Eisenstein’s personal letters, diaries, and sketches, Bergan shines a new light on the influence of Eisenstein’s early life on his work, his homosexuality, and his keen interest in the West. This book is the definitive biography of an influential director who saw film as the synthesis of all the arts and whose work displayed a passionate and profound grasp of art, science, philosophy, and religion.

This Thing of Darkness

This Thing of Darkness
Author: Joan Neuberger
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 425
Release: 2019-03-15
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1501732773

Sergei Eisenstein's unfinished masterpiece, Ivan the Terrible, was no ordinary movie. Commissioned by Joseph Stalin in 1941 to justify state terror in the sixteenth century and in the twentieth, the film's politics, style, and epic scope aroused controversy even before it was released. In This Thing of Darkness, Joan Neuberger offers a sweeping account of the conception, making, and reception of Ivan the Terrible that weaves together Eisenstein's expansive thinking and experimental practice with a groundbreaking new view of artistic production under Stalin. Drawing on Eisenstein's unpublished production notebooks, diaries, and manuscripts, Neuberger's riveting narrative chronicles Eisenstein's personal, creative, and political challenges and reveals the ways cinematic invention, artistic theory, political critique, and historical and psychological analysis went hand in hand in this famously complex film. Neuberger's bold arguments and daring insights into every aspect of Eisenstein's work during this period, together with her ability to lucidly connect his wide-ranging late theory with his work on Ivan, show the director exploiting the institutions of Soviet artistic production not only to expose the cruelties of Stalin and his circle but to challenge the fundamental principles of Soviet ideology itself. Ivan the Terrible, she argues, shows us one of the world's greatest filmmakers and one of the 20th century's greatest artists observing the world around him and experimenting with every element of film art to explore the psychology of political ambition, uncover the history of recurring cycles of violence and lay bare the tragedy of absolute power.

The Printing Press as an Agent of Change

The Printing Press as an Agent of Change
Author: Elizabeth L. Eisenstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 814
Release: 1980-09-30
Genre: Design
ISBN: 9780521299558

A full-scale historical treatment of the advent of printing and its importance as an agent of change, first published in 1980.

The Cinema of Eisenstein

The Cinema of Eisenstein
Author: David Bordwell
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2020-10-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1000159094

The Cinema of Eisenstein is David Bordwell's comprehensive analysis of the films of Sergei Eisenstein, arguably the key figure in the entire history of film. The director of such classics as Potemkin, Ivan the Terrible, October, Strike, and Alexander Nevsky, Eisenstein theorized montage, presented Soviet realism to the world, and mastered the concept of film epic. Comprehensive, authoritative, and illustrated throughout, this classic work deserves to be on the shelf of every serious student of cinema.

Introduction to Natural Language Processing

Introduction to Natural Language Processing
Author: Jacob Eisenstein
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 535
Release: 2019-10-01
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0262042843

A survey of computational methods for understanding, generating, and manipulating human language, which offers a synthesis of classical representations and algorithms with contemporary machine learning techniques. This textbook provides a technical perspective on natural language processing—methods for building computer software that understands, generates, and manipulates human language. It emphasizes contemporary data-driven approaches, focusing on techniques from supervised and unsupervised machine learning. The first section establishes a foundation in machine learning by building a set of tools that will be used throughout the book and applying them to word-based textual analysis. The second section introduces structured representations of language, including sequences, trees, and graphs. The third section explores different approaches to the representation and analysis of linguistic meaning, ranging from formal logic to neural word embeddings. The final section offers chapter-length treatments of three transformative applications of natural language processing: information extraction, machine translation, and text generation. End-of-chapter exercises include both paper-and-pencil analysis and software implementation. The text synthesizes and distills a broad and diverse research literature, linking contemporary machine learning techniques with the field's linguistic and computational foundations. It is suitable for use in advanced undergraduate and graduate-level courses and as a reference for software engineers and data scientists. Readers should have a background in computer programming and college-level mathematics. After mastering the material presented, students will have the technical skill to build and analyze novel natural language processing systems and to understand the latest research in the field.